THE PASSING OF PĚNGLIMA PRANG SĚMAUN
upon Haji Masah to yield, but he declined utterly to do so.
His wife said, “What is the use, you are wounded and cannot fight, so am I and so is Haji Sahil, what can we do, better make terms with them?” Haji Masah stubbornly declined to listen to this persua- sion and only said, “Let them do their worst, I will not yield.”
Strange to say it was only then that Haji Hawah realised that her daughter was missing. She remembered that the girl had left the house with her and gone into the kitchen, but until that moment, what with the discovery that the enemy was within their gates, the struggle at the door and subsequent events, she had not thought of the girl further than to suppose she was sitting terrified in some corner of the never brilliantly lighted house.
Now, however, it was certain that she had failed to get back before the door was closed and must, have fallen into the hands of the enemy.
As a matter of fact nothing of the kind had happened. On the first alarm, seeing the crowd of strange men and her mother’s struggles to gain the house, the girl was too terrified to leave her shelter and had hidden herself in the kitchen. The enemy being all under the house when the women first
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